


The Odd Life & Death Of Captain America

by icewhisper



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Post-Avengers (2012), Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, buzzfeed unsolved au, just assume buzzfeed unsolved was around when steve defrosted, this is the closest to rpf as i'll ever get
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-17
Updated: 2019-06-17
Packaged: 2020-05-13 13:54:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19252540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icewhisper/pseuds/icewhisper
Summary: This week on Buzzfeed Unsolved, we delve into the odd history behind Captain America; a national hero who we still learn about in school, but whose identity is still a mystery.(AKA Steve finds YouTube.)





	The Odd Life & Death Of Captain America

**Author's Note:**

> For anyone not very familiar with Buzzfeed Unsolved, Ryan and Shane have two series, True Crime and Supernatural, where they look into unsolved crimes and try to answer the question _are ghosts real_ (Shane says no). Ryan is the one who researches and presents the case to Shane. In various areas of an episode, they may cut away from video to a screen that is the text of their conversations. When it happens, Shane's text is aligned to the left while Ryan's is aligned to the right. I tried to stay true to that with this.

 

The apartment they gave him when he woke up was more of a relic than a home. The clothes were too new and too stiff to feel familiar, no matter how much the SHIELD agent who brought them insisted they were vintage. The files they handed him were old and coffee-stained with dates he hadn’t lived through.

James Barnes: Deceased

Timothy Dugan: Deceased

Jim Morita: Deceased

Jacques Dernier: Deceased

Montgomery Falsworth: Deceased

Gabriel Jones: Deceased

Howard Stark: Deceased

Margaret Carter: Retired

He read through them once and hid them away in the bottom drawer of his desk. He poured over the series of packets someone had put together; one for each decade that explained everything he’d missed. The wars. The progression. The times they faltered back a step.

Nothing in the packets had prepared him for aliens and having to put himself back into a suit to represent a country that was his as much as it wasn’t anymore. He walked off the aches and pains of battle. He kept a polite smile plastered on his face for the interviews that came after; calm conversations with ABC and stilted ones as the interviewer from FOX News cut too deep with reminiscing about the _good ol’ days_.

Nine days after the battle, Clint showed up at his apartment with tired eyes and an order to pack a bag, because _we’re all moving into the Tower_.

He hadn’t wanted to, the animosity with Tony still too prominent in his memory. He didn’t think Stark would even _want_ him there, but Clint told him it was the Tower or the cabin.

“Fury wants you at the cabin,” the archer explained. “Said it’s quieter to help you adjust, but you don’t seem like the kinda guy that would do too good in the middle of nowhere.”

“That obvious?”

Clint looked over his shoulder at a poorly patched hole Steve had left in the wall on his second day in the apartment. “Does this place even have a TV?” he asked instead.

“No.”

“Computer?”

“I have a landline?” Steve offered. Clint gave him a horrified look.

“How are you supposed to learn what you missed with a _landline_?”

“They gave me some packets,” he explained and gestured back towards the desk. He still had _1960’s_ open to Woodstock. He’d had to read it three times. He was pretty sure he’d have to read it a fourth.

“No. _No_.” Clint groaned like he was the one that was supposed to read them. “Who- Actually, don’t answer that. It was Collins, wasn’t it? Skinny kid that looks like he should still be in high school?”

“I think that’s who it was,” Steve admitted. “He stuttered a lot.”

“Definitely Collins.” Clint sighed. “Go. Bag. There’s a shiny new floor waiting for you at the Tower and it comes with internet.”

 

 

The floor came with internet.

It also came with a laptop he didn’t know how to use, a Stark phone that didn’t have buttons, a TV that Steve was pretty sure was the size of the bed he and Bucky used to squeeze into when the winters got cold-

Yeah. No. He wasn’t ready to think about Bucky yet.

Tony presented the floor with a flourish that would have put Howard to shame and Steve wondered if the man realized Steve had never cared about extravagance. Still, an olive branch was an olive branch, so he gave Tony a polite smile and hiked his duffle up a little higher on his shoulder. “It’s great, Tony. Thank you,” he said, even as a part of him wished for the relic back in Brooklyn that felt like a lie, but wasn’t so aggressively modern.

“Just tell Jarvis when you want to change out the furniture,” Tony told him, as if he didn’t care about Steve potentially throwing out what must have been thousands of dollars’ worth of furniture. “Or paint. Whatever. He’ll pull up options and order whatever you want.”

“No. It’s fine.” The white couches were probably a disaster waiting to happen with him, but it was fine. Maybe he could lay some sheets over them. “I’ll pay you back-”

“Avenger’s HQ,” Tony cut in. “SHIELD gets billed for everything. So seriously. Order stuff. I want to see how much I can make Fury’s head spin while Pep passes stuff off as business expenses.”

He’d met Pepper at the press conferences right after the Chitauri. First, a quick glance at her when she rushed past them to Tony and promptly started yelling at him. Then, the second time when she straightened his tie and told all of them what not to say on camera.

He wondered if she was still miffed at him about what he said to that guy from FOX.

Tony left him with a careless wave and a reminder that his search history was private. “You know, in case the Little Cap feels like saluting to some pin-up girls.”

 

 

The first night was hard. The mattress was too soft. The room was too quiet. The air conditioning was too cold.

He came awake with a shout – _BuckyBuckyBucky_ – and his chest so tight that he couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t-

Jarvis talked to him until he could, calm and collected the whole time, and Steve wondered if all computers could do that.

“Can you keep the heat turned up at night?”

“Of course. What temperature would you like?”

Steve thought of the Alps and the way the wind bit into his skin while he watched Bucky fall away. “As high as you can.”

The room steadily got warmer as Jarvis began to pipe in the audio from the security cameras closer to the streets.

If Jarvis had the ability to judge someone, he said nothing when Steve took a pillow and blanket with him to sleep on the floor.

If he saw at all.

 

 

Clint was the first to join him on the common floor the next morning as sunlight only just started peeking through the windows. There were still circles under his eyes and a stubborn set to his jaw that Steve was pretty sure meant, no, he didn’t want to talk about it.

He passed Clint the coffee he’d poured for himself and went to get himself another.

“Does this even do anything for you?” Clint asked, curious, as he drank.

“No,” Steve admitted, “but it’s habit.”

Clint hummed, thoughtful. “Anyone tell you what coffee costs now?”

“They got around to it about the time someone asked me if I wanted to order lunch,” Steve said dryly. “I wasn’t ready to see a twenty-dollar burger.”

“Surprising?”

“That’s more than my rent was.”

Clint laughed around his next sip. “Pass over the Pop Tarts. Blue box.”

He took the direction without telling Clint that he’d seen Pop Tarts before, because that meant talking about his minor heart attack when he saw how much groceries cost now. Or how he’d struggled with his card before some teenage girl with blue hair and a piercing through her lip took pity on him.

He also didn’t mention that he was pretty sure they were supposed to go into the toaster when Clint pulled one from the foil and bit right in.

He did, however, take the second one when Clint offered.

“You still going through those files?”

Steve hummed. He’d finally read through Woodstock enough that he felt okay moving on from it, but he’d been weaving around all the entries he’d been seeing about the war in Vietnam since it popped up in the _1950’s_ file. He was so _tired_ of reading about war. “It’s a lot to learn.”

Clint chewed for a minute, contemplative. “What year are you on?”

“1969.”

“Hm. Jarvis,” Clint said, voice pitched a little higher, “when did that first Cap movie come out?”

“ _Captain America: An American Hero_ was released in theaters on November 26, 1969,” Jarvis said. “Reports showed that they chose to release it the day before Thanksgiving as a way of thanking the Captain for his service.”

“No one was thankful for it,” Clint told him, not without some glee. Steve thought he may have been enjoying this. “It was horrible.”

Steve groaned.

“It ended up being more like some kind of conspiracy theory, because the army never declassified your name when you…” He waved a hand vaguely. “Well. The only backstory people really had for you was whatever they came up with in the comics.”

Steve knew the comics. He had seen the comics. He hadn’t been consulted for a single thing in the comics. If he had, Bucky wouldn’t have been a child with a mask.

Steve massaged his temples. “I don’t want to know.”

“If you change your mind, check out YouTube. There’s a couple copies of it uploaded over there.”

 

 

He asked Jarvis to pull up the movie that night when his heart was still hammering and he could still hear the ghost of Bucky’s scream. He needed something to distract himself until his hands stopped shaking enough that he could hold a pencil. Once he could, he’d draw something. He’d been meaning to sketch the view from the Tower.

The movie was worse than Clint made it sound. The entire thing was set up like a biography that threw him on a pedestal he’d never wanted to be on. The Howlies – when they were even featured – were so inaccurate that Steve had only been able to watch in mute horror when he realized the two white men he didn’t recognize were supposed to be Jim and Gabe.

He wondered what Dernier would have done when he saw the way they had his character – because it truly wasn’t Jacques Dernier at all – wandering around with a baguette for half the film.

He wondered what Bucky would have done if he’d seen how they wrote him as a good Catholic boy instead of the Jewish son that made his ma curse at him in Yiddish.

He thought watching the movie may not have been a good idea at all.

“Did anyone even try to get it right?”

“Not well.” Steve jumped. He’d forgotten Jarvis was listening. “Public perception to the movies and attempted documentaries released were sub-par at best in ratings and revenue. They stopped trying in 1982, but people still continue to theorize.”

Steve hummed softly. “Can you just…play something else?”

The next video to pop up was a pair of young men, talking their way through the Black Dahlia case, presenting facts and theories that pulled his head out of the past and into something else. The Zodiac. Jack the Ripper. John F. Kennedy.

The theories were interesting, drifting somewhere between probable and outlandish. A handful of them included some illusive Winter Soldier that Shane didn’t seem to believe existed.

 

This is like the ghosts, isn’t it? No factual evidence and you-

No one asked you. These are the theories. 

They flipped back and forth between the case and the follow-up Q&A that seemed to have become a norm. More theories. Fans. The Hot-Daga was something he hadn’t thought he’d enjoy, but he started to grin every time they led into it.

He let it become a habit every time memories drove him out of his nest of blankets on the floor. Most nights, he’d go to the gym, content to test the strength of the punching bags until his brain went quiet again. The nights he couldn’t stomach the thought of leaving the floor, he asked Jarvis pull up the videos, cycling through the true crime videos until he’d exhausted what they had.

He laughed when the videos – Jarvis called it a playlist – moved onto a Supernatural series that Steve believed in as much as he didn’t. He skipped over the alien-based videos that still felt a little too fresh after the Chitauri and chuckled when Shane tried to goad demons.

Then, they got to him.

He’d opened his mouth when he saw the title flash across the screen when _The Spirits Of The William Kehoe House_ finished up and the countdown to the next one began, ready to tell Jarvis that he was done and to cut the feed. It wasn’t something he needed to watch. There had to be a point when watching videos of yourself stopped being a curiosity and turned into narcissism. The words didn’t come and the video loaded.

 

This week on Buzzfeed Unsolved, we delve into the odd history behind Captain America; a national hero who we still learn about in school, but whose identity is still a mystery.

Is this one even Supernatural?

Not really? But I had to choose one of the seasons and there’s more stuff that’s unexplained. Some of the theories

You’d better not say aliens.

Just listen.

I’m just saying. We put Amelia Earhart under True Crime. Didn’t think there was any crime there, did ya?

I’m ignoring you. Let’s get into it

Captain America is a name well-known to almost any student who went through the US school system. As we know it, he and his team, the Howling Commandos, were essential in pushing back Hydra’s forces during World War II between 1943 and 1945. The part that’s hard to understand, though, is exactly how instrumental Captain America could have been when so little about him is actually public knowledge. While it’s known that he was actively in the public eye from 1943 until 1945 – first as a performer with the USO and, later, serving actively in the army – the name of the man behind the title was never declassified.

Didn’t he make a bunch of movies too?

Yeah. Back when he was with the USO, he seemed to alternate between live shows with chorus girls and movies that were mostly shorter propaganda films and one romance movie that was…not good? I mean, that one was mostly propaganda, too, but…

I remember it. My mom still has it on VHS.

_(wheeze)_ No, she doesn’t.

I wish she didn’t. _For Love Of Country_. You know how many times I had to watch it growing up?

This is amazing. Did they release it on DVD?

I hope not.

They did try reusing them during the Vietnam War when protests started, probably intending for Captain America’s presence to quiet the protestors, but all it did was raise more questions about why a supposed war hero’s identity was swept under the rug so much.

With that, let’s talk about what we do know.

“Javis, pause.”

The video stilled, image halfway to presenting the timeline Steve had grown used to seeing. Most other episodes, it was fine. He’d had to get up and take a walk during the video about the Cleveland Torso Killer, because he _remembered_ that. He’d been selling newspapers on street corners between school and illness when the murders had started, remembered seeing the headlines and the tension in Bucky’s shoulders while the other boy shouted out the news because he couldn’t without falling into coughs.

He remembered the trip to Lima that the Barneses had cancelled and the constant letters back and forth while Bucky’s Aunt Cora had assured them over and over that she was safe and not going near the city.

It had taken him until the next morning before he could finish it, hands clasped right around his coffee mug.

He’d watched the story of Amelia Earhart with a sinking sadness that she’d never been found. Thought of himself and reminded himself too many times that she was gone, that she hadn’t had the serum to keep her alive like he had.

Thought about how Bucky hadn’t had it when he fell either.

He’d stared at the wall too long that time, lost in staring at the white haze of the paint on a blank wall. Thought of snow and ice and the cold that he didn’t think would ever truly come out of his bones.

Natasha had been next to him when he blinked back into himself, bowl of popcorn in her lap and going back through some videos he’d already watched. She’d handed the bowl over without a word and didn’t say anything when he asked Jarvis to not let that one play again.

He never finished that episode and the others had shown up on his floor the next day with hands full of paint buckets and brushes while Tony declared that he was sick of waiting for Steve to decorate.

“Captain?”

He glanced over at the living room walls that the rest of the Avengers had helped him paint a soft green. Inhaled. Exhaled.

“I’m okay. You can play it.”

 

On November 3, 1943, Captain America went on a one-man rescue mission in Austria where he rescued a total of 412 soldiers from behind enemy lines. Among those rescued were the men who would become the Howling Commandos; Timothy “Dum Dum” Dugan, Gabe Jones, Jim Morita, James Montgomery Falsworth, Jacques Dernier, and James “Bucky” Barnes. Barnes would end up being the only other Howling Commando to die in the line of duty.

The history before that, though, is where things get interesting. While we know Captain America started out on the USO circuit instead of on active duty, there aren’t any public records to show when or how he reached a Captain’s rank. The first mentions of him came from the few months he was with the USO, but Austria seems to be the first time he entered active combat.

Kinda weird.

Yeah. Makes you wonder how someone can go from selling war bonds to leading a team.

Maybe he flipped between them?

What? Like combat, USO, combat? I thought that at first, but I didn’t get the feeling he’d been in the field at all before he ended up in Austria.

I got to speak to Constance Fitzpatrick, a dancer who’d performed with Captain America while he was still on the circuit and she had this to say:

“We really only ever got to see him in rehearsals. They tried to keep him separate from everybody else, but I know he was friendly with a few of the girls. It always seemed odd to us that someone like him hadn’t been put on the front. You could tell how much he wanted to be out there. We were about as happy for him as we were worried when he left, but it always bothered me that we were never even allowed to know his name. They only ever let us call him Cap. You could tell he hated it.”

Wait. They didn’t know his name?

It was all classified. They don’t even show his name on the old movie credits.

It was the USO. How many secrets could they have had? Was his high kick a state secret?

There was definitely something fishy going on.

It gets worse, doesn’t it?

It gets weirder.

Throw it at me.

Here’s what we know:

The Howling Commandos took their first official mission on a HYDRA facility in France in December 12, 1943. Over the next few months, they’d keep it up and, eventually, become a driving force in World War II. During all of this, though, they were reporting to the Strategic Scientific Reserve, not solely to Army officials.

Falsworth and Dernier weren’t even from the US, right?

Nope. Falsworth was from of the British Armed Forces. Dernier was a member of the French Resistance. I mean, it kind of makes sense that they weren’t reporting straight to the US Army since not all of them were actually from there, but at the same time, they were under Captain America’s command, so… Plus, you should also remember that the SSR wasn’t American-specific. They had people involved from European countries.

Kind of like the UN meets science fair.

Considering Howard Stark worked with them, science fair might actually be pretty accurate. There’s a lot of speculation why someone like him was even involved with it. He designed some weapons, but you wouldn’t think he’d be too deeply involved with it past that.

Didn’t he keep looking for Captain America after he died? I feel like I remember them talking about it in school.

He did. Every year, he’d go out for a few months to search. And he didn’t just send out search parties. He went with them, so you gotta assume that speaks to a closer relationship than him just being the guy that apparently designed Captain America’s shield. And he died in 1991. Can you imagine going out to search for someone for over forty years if you weren’t friends with them?

I don’t think I’d look for you for that long.

I would have figured the demons finally came for you.

“Can we pause?” he asked, head tilted up towards the ceiling just a little.

“Of course, sir.”

His smile was strained as he stood and retreated back towards the kitchen and the Keurig sitting on the counter. He was okay, he reminded himself. He was okay. He’d known Howard had kept looking for him, had read the reports in Howard’s tidy scrawl and listened to Tony’s griping. Decades of searching, just to die without ever getting an answer. He felt guilty, sad about the time Tony had lost with Howard and at the pain Howard had never managed to let go of.

The Keurig started to spit out the coffee, darkness filling up the light ceramic as he watched. He cast a glance towards the plastic container of powdered creamer that only ever got touched when Clint or Bruce came by. He didn’t touch it or the sugar and drank it black.

It was fine, he reminded himself again. He was fine. A video couldn’t hurt him.

“Okay,” he said as he sat back down on the couch. “I’m good.”

 

What we know is this:

On December 1, 1945, Captain America, James Barnes, and Gabe Jones stormed a train that was carrying Arnim Zola, a Hydra scientist that worked for Johann Schmidt, also known as the Red Skull-

Did anyone ever actually explain that?

What? You think his skull was actually red?

No, because I’m not insane. But I also can’t imagine a bunch of Nazis giving each other fun little nicknames.

That’s fair.

It was on this mission that Barnes died. The exact details were never declassified, but in an interview with TIME after the war, Jones implied that Barnes had fallen, saying:

“We’d all wanted to go back and look for him, but it was war. The speed of the train and how deep the ravine was… It all happened too quick to us to have figured out where he might have landed. No one could authorize a search party when we were so close to Schmidt.”

They never found his body?

They were never able to look. Captain America and the rest of the Commandos stormed Hydra’s HQ four days later-

Wait. Four days after Barnes died?

Yep.

And that’s when Captain America-Yep.

That was a shitty week for them, wasn’t it?

Well, it definitely wasn’t pleasant.

Just like with Barnes’ last mission, the location of Hydra’s headquarters was never declassified, but it’s known that Captain America went up against the Red Skull and, presumably, won. In the same interview with TIME, the Commandos explained that Schmidt’s plane had been loaded with explosives and Captain America crashed the plane rather than let it reach land. James Morita and Margret Carter – a member of the SSR – were the ones to hear the last transmission before the crash. And, just like with Barnes, Captain Amercia’s body was never recovered.

The fact they died so close together is still nuts to me. I thought the gap was bigger.

Most people did. News was so slow to break, because of the war. Plus, there’s some speculation that the Army tried to keep Captain America’s death silent rather than risk morale dropping.

That’s just shady.

He stood up, only dimly aware that Jarvis had paused the video again, that Jarvis was talking to him and asking if he was okay.

He wasn’t.

He was wrong.

Videos could still hurt.

Bucky. The fall. Bodies never brought home. Funeral rites that never got to happen. A mother who never got to bury her son. A family who never got closure. He’d never had the strength to look up the Barnes family in the few weeks he’d been awake. George and Winnie would be long dead by now. Becca. Hannah. Miriam.

His fingers curled around the windowsill, knuckles white as his back bowed. Breathe. He had to breathe. Breathe. Not throw up. Not cry. He had to pull himself together.

“Should I call somebody?” Jarvis asked, calm voice cutting through the blood pounding in his ears and-

“No. No. I’m fine.”

“Your heartrate says otherwise.”

Distantly, he wondered if all computers were smartasses or if that was unique to ones Tony made. He had a feeling it was Tony.

“They really never found him?”

“No, sir.”

He shouldn’t have asked. He’d known better. Even back when Bucky fell, the chances of finding a body before the elements and wildlife got to him were slim. Even if they hadn’t been so close to Schmidt, they never would have given the clearance to exert the manpower for a search.

It still made him want to scream.

“Shall I block this video as well, sir?”

Steve didn’t answer. He left the apartment and headed down for the gym.

By the time Bruce walked in the next morning for his yoga, Steve’s bare feet and hands had been beaten bloody against the bags.

“Steve? Are you okay?”

He thought the way he swayed and pressed his forehead to the bag said _no_ well enough.

Tony restricted his gym access after that.

“You’re saying I can’t work out,” he said flatly, more of a statement than a question.

“Bruce made worried eyes at me. We’ve got rules about stressing out the good doctor, Capsicle, remember? The crews _just_ finished cleaning up from the last time he got mad.”

“I’m not a child, Tony.”

“For the next two weeks, you are. Supervised workouts only and Jarvis doesn’t count as supervision. It’s gotta be an Avenger.”

“I’m twenty-seven-”

“You’re ninety-four.”

“I’m _twenty-seven_ , Stark,” he said, testy, and watched Tony’s eyes go wide, like he’d forgotten that the years in the ice didn’t count.

It didn’t help. He still got blocked from solo workouts for two weeks and there were only so many times he could get the others to join him. Had Thor been on-world, he thought the god would have been happy to join him, but Thor was still in Asgard and trying to settle matters with Loki.

Clint was on his couch when he came back, high-strung and irritated because Natasha wasn’t around and Tony and Bruce were both sequestered away in the lab.

“Yo,” Clint said and waved at him with the hand that wasn’t caught up in the sling. He’d dislocated his shoulder on his last SHIELD mission and was under orders from Natasha to keep the sling on until he’d healed. Steve hadn’t actually heard the threat she’d used to make Clint agree, but it had seemed to work well enough. Clint had been wearing it for a solid three days without interruption.

“Am I late for something?”

“Nope. I’m just bored.” He raised his good hand again and, this time, Steve noticed the remote. “Figured we could watch a movie or something. I still wanna show you Harry Potter.”

“Harry Potter is on YouTube?” he asked skeptically as he glanced at the screen.

“Nah. I was watching stuff while I waited for you. There were some sneak peeks for the next episode of Dog Cops,” Clint explained. “Didn’t know you fell down the YouTube rabbit hole.”

At least it was a reference Steve understood, he thought with a sigh. “Yeah.”

“Found your episode,” Clint noted, gesturing at the watch history displayed on the screen. “I watch these ones too.”

“I didn’t finish it.”

Clint hummed, thoughtful, but he didn’t seem like he was judging. “It was a good episode. Theories were pretty funny.” He flashed Steve a grin. “Think you’d get a laugh outta one of them.”

He opened his mouth to say no, to suggest that they just watch Harry Potter instead, but he hesitated. He’d avoided the videos since he stormed out of the apartment.

“Jarvis, can we skip right to the theories?”

“Yes, Captain.”

He nodded, heaved a breath, and sat down next to Clint. “Alright. You can play it.”

 

And almost seventy years later, we still have no idea who he was. People have come forward over the years, claiming they were family, but every last one of them were debunked by the Howling Commandos, Stark, or Carter. In 1956, Jacob Preston made national headlines when he started claiming to be Captain America’s brother, but like with the others, the Howling Commandos shut it down. They asked people to stop, saying that they’d remained in close contact with the people Captain America left behind. Claims stopped after that.

Before we get into the theories, it’s worth it to say that the Commandos and other people who seemed to know Captain America’s identity were quick to debunk most theories, a question is also raised about if they would also spoken out against any correct theories.

What? Because of their orders?

Or to protect his family, especially if they’d kept in contact with them.

The first theory is that there was more than one Captain America that the Army would trade them out, based off of the needs of the mission. Having multiple people under the same moniker would help to explain the idea of Captain America storming the base in Austria, because honestly, the idea that one man did that is kind of insane.

So one for stealth, one for combat, one for PR…

Right.

But couldn’t they have kept the name going, though? Instead of admitting that one of them died?

That’s where the theory kind of falls apart. I’d get it if the one they used for PR died, but if the story about him going down in the plane was true, that doesn’t explain why their PR guy was in combat all of a sudden. You’d think they’d use their combat Captain America for it.

I’m pretty comfortable throwing that one out.

Yeah. It’s interesting, but it doesn’t really add up either.

The second theory is that Captain America was an alien-

No. No. Next theory.

It would explain how he-

Next theory, Ryan! I’m worried about what the rest of them are if aliens were the second theory.

Clint barked a laugh

Steve’s lips quirked upwards.

 

The third theory is an actual person; Daniel Sousa.

I know that name.

He was married to Peggy Carter. His marriage to her is actually part of why people think he was Captain America. He lost his leg in the war that, according to a biographical piece written in 1986, resulted in him joining the SSR. The people that believe the multiple-Caps theory sometimes think that he was the PR-Cap and that his injury meant they couldn’t have him in front of the cameras anymore. Kind of shitty thinking if they really did kill off the guy in the public eye because he got hurt.

Admittedly, what we do know of Captain America in appearance, doesn’t really match him. He was a bit shorter than Cap was thought to be. Plus, he was brunet. Captain America wasn’t seen without his helmet too often when the cameras were around, but the people that did see him, generally agreed that he’d been blond. The hair could be explained away by dye and the idea that he stopped dying it after he lost his leg, but unless they were tossing him in heels, the height is a little harder.

Yeah. I’m not convinced.

He’s the one people tend to jump to, but I think it’s mostly because of his marriage to Carter. Back during the war and right after his death, a lot of publications tried to push a tragic love story about them. Carter admitted she’d loved him, but she was always tight-lipped about exactly what their relationship had been. Granted, it was the 40’s, so it’s not like she was going to hop over to TMZ for some kind of all-exclusive.

Mostly, I think people just want there to be a happy end to the love story where Sousa stopped being Captain America and they got to settle down. It’s a nice thought, but in the piece from 1986, Sousa said he’d been injured in Siege of Bastogne, so if that’s true, he would have lost his leg a whole year before Captain America even died.

So the only way this one really even works is if they lied about dates and had him wear stilts in front of the cameras.

Basically.

“Did you know about him?” Clint asked.

Steve nodded. “SHIELD gave me files on everyone when I woke up. Peggy’s was...” He paused. Swallowed. “He’s a good guy. Peg’s in an assisted living back in Winchester. She’s got dementia. Alzheimer’s,” he corrected. “I tried calling not too long after I woke up. Ended up speaking to him. He said they’re going to be transferring her down to DC so they can be closer to their grandkids.”

“Awkward?”

“No,” Steve said honestly, because it hadn’t been. He’d been stripped raw and ready for something in his chest to tear open while the phone rang. Speaking to Daniel had been more like finding closure, knowing that she’d been okay without him. That losing him hadn’t held her back. “He said I should visit if I was in the area. I’m not sure if I’m ready for that yet.”

“My ex-wife is down there,” Clint mentioned and tossed some popcorn into his mouth. He didn’t seem to notice when Steve looked at him in shock. “I gotta swing down at some point to go to a family reunion.”

“I… What?”

“Her grandmother’s traditional. Doesn’t believe in divorce, blah, blah, blah. I go with her every few years and she owes me a favor that usually involves her calling in the cavalry when I end up in over my head. She’s SHIELD too.”

Steve nodded, eyes still wide, as Clint told Jarvis to pick the video back up.

 

 

The fourth theory is another person; Jack Thompson. Like with Sousa, he’d been a soldier before moving on to the SSR after the war. This theory is a little weaker, relying more on his connection to the SSR and fact that Thompson met the physical attributes more than Sousa did. He was more in-line with how tall people said he was and was blond. The biggest thing working against it, too, is that while Thompson was a decorated soldier, towards in the last year of the war, he was based in Japan, not Europe. It was there that he was credited with killing a group of Japanese soldiers that were approaching his camp single-handedly. While some people use it as an example to show how Thompson could have theoretically pulled off the breakout in Austria, I think it’s a stretch. A group of soldiers versus an entire base of them.

Plus the whole fact that he was in another country when Captain America was in Europe.

Yep. Touching back to the first theory, some people theorize that he was the combat version of Cap to Sousa’s PR role. They say that when Sousa got hurt, they had to pull Captain America from the public eye and that included pulling Thompson from the combat role. For that to work, though, it would mean the Sousa theory would also have to be right and, like we said before, it doesn’t really hold up.

It is worth it to say that Thompson was found dead in a Pasadena hotel room in 1947. He’d been shot once in the chest. Some people say it’s because of his identity as Captain America, but if he was working as an SSR agent, I’m sure he ended up with a few enemies.

I don’t think it was him. I’d believe Sousa before him. He wasn’t even on the continent.

Agreed.

The last theory, frankly, I find ridiculous-

You already said one of the theories was aliens and this is the ridiculous one?

Oh, shut up.

The final theory – and the final person people actually name as a possible identity – is Steve Rogers.

Steve choked on his fistful of popcorn. “ _What_?”

Clint cackled.

 

Rogers and Barnes were best friends from childhood and roommates when Barnes was drafted into the war. Records show that Rogers had tried to enlist multiple times, going as far to falsify information, but he was labelled unfit for service every time. Someone actually unearthed a couple old exam sheets from his attempts that listed out his health issues as asthma, anemia, diabetes, color-blindness, heart murmur, scoliosis, angina, scarlet fever, rheumatic fever, sinusitis, chronic or frequent colds, high blood pressure, palpitation or pounding in heart, easy fatigability, heart trouble, nervous trouble of any sort, has had household contact with tuberculosis patient, and parent/sibling with diabetes, cancer, stroke, or heart disease.

That’s not real.

It is!

He’d be dead, Ryan! This was the 40’s!

I’ll show you the exam after. I swear, it’s real.

And you’re trying to say this guy was Captain America?

I’m not trying to. Other people are. I think it’s insane.

Health issues aside, the same report listed his birthday – get this – as July 4.

No.

And said he was 5’4’’, which was even shorter than Sousa, and only weighed in at 110 pounds.

Who thinks this guy was Captain America? We need to talk. I’ve got a bridge to sell you.

_(wheeze)_

There were implications at the time that the SSR was leaning a little more heavily towards the scientific side of their name-

Don’t tell me we’re going the Dr. Frankenstein route.

Pretty much. There’s the idea that his involvement and whatever stuff was done to him is why they’ve tried to keep his identity so under-wraps.

And what? They just disappeared him?

Kind of? Shortly after Barnes shipped out in 1943, Rogers allegedly joined the army effort in a clerical role and shipped out to wherever he was supposed to be a couple weeks later. People have looked through records, but never found any kind of documentation to say where he’d been stationed. He was never seen again after he moved out of their apartment.

Because he probably died. That many health issues-

He was apparently deaf in one ear too. Some people that knew him said it, but it wasn’t on the paperwork.

“Were you?” Clint asked, curious.

Steve nodded and resisted the urge to look at the purple hearing aids hooked over Clint’s own ears. “Mostly deaf in my left ear,” he explained. “I could hear a bit, but it wasn’t that clear.” He tipped his head back onto the couch with a half-hearted chuckle. “Best way to tell if Buck was annoyed at me was if he was walking on my left side.”

“Yeah?”

“He was usually careful about staying on my right. Only stuck to my left when he wanted to clock me for some reason. Usually, ‘cause I got into another fight.” He shook his head. “He stayed on my left side the whole hike back from Austria. Didn’t realize I could hear him muttering the whole way.”

“What’d he do when he found out?”

Steve smiled. “Clocked me.”

 

Oh, jeez. Yeah. No. If he admitted he had that many issues, he probably was keeping some stuff quiet too. I’m surprised polio isn’t on the list.

Realistically, he probably died during the war and word just never got home. If there’s no documentation actually showing he joined the army, I’m hesitant to believe he made it in at all, even for desk work. The Barnes family were the ones that reported he’d gotten the job since they were the only family he apparently had after his mother died in 1936. Between the Depression and medical bills, you can imagine that money was probably tight. Some records people dug up showed that he and Barnes had been living in one of the cheaper tenements in Brooklyn. I think it’s more probable that he just fell on harder times and, pride-wise, didn’t want to ask for help.

What some people think, though, is that he got involved with whatever the SSR was working on in 1943. When I was speaking to Constance Fitzpatrick, she had mentioned that Captain America used to give them sketches he’d done. Rogers was apparently employed as an artist off and on, but the Barnes family always kept what sketchbooks they still had private, so no one has ever been able to compare them.

His relationship with Barnes, though, is also why some people think Captain America would have stormed the base in Austria since Barnes was one of the soldiers being held prisoner.

He was a 5’4’’ guy whose body was practically held together with duct tape and could probably get knocked over if the breeze was hard enough.

I told you this one was ridiculous.

Yeah. No. Debunked. Refused. This isn’t a theory, Ryan. I should have just let you explain the aliens.

Ultimately, no one knows who the man behind the mask was or why the army has strived to keep so much of his identity secret. Unless the information is ever declassified, the odd life and death of Captain America will remain unsolved.

The video ended, auto-play paused before it could begin to load up _The Ghostly Guests At Lake Shawnee Amusement Park_ and Steve found himself still smiling. “Bucky’s family knew where I was. His da just about tore me a new one when I told them I’d managed to enlist for some kind of experiment. I wasn’t supposed to tell them,” he admitted, “but they were family. They were gonna worry if I stopped coming by.”

“Plus, you needed them to not tell Bucky?”

“Plus, I needed them to not tell Bucky.” Steve took the extra beer Clint had left on the table and popped it open. “I only got to see them once after the serum. Got them tickets for a show when we were in New York.”

“You wanted them to see you in tights?”

“Wanted them to know I was okay,” he corrected. “They’d never actually seen me healthy.”

Clint hummed and took a pull from his own beer. “They happy when you guys ended up together?”

“Worried, but I think they were relieved too. I mean, until…” He stopped. Swallowed.

“Must have been rough. Getting one notice after the other.”

“I don’t think the telegram about Bucky even reached them before I… There’d been a lot going on. I don’t think they had time to send it out right away.”

He thought about it, the image of Winnie opening the door to a Western Union messenger holding two telegrams. He knew Winnie. She would have screamed.

Clint hefted himself off the couch. “I’m gonna order us a pizza. You still wanna watch Harry Potter? Get your head outta that stuff?”

“Yeah. Sure.” He wasn’t sure how much he really thought he’d be able to focus on it.

“Before you move on,” Jarvis cut in, “might I suggest watching the follow-up video?”

Clint looked up from his phone. “The what?”

“The follow-up episode that was posted after Captain Rogers’ interview with FOX,” Jarvis explained and let the video load.

**_The Odd Life & Death Of Captain America: Update_ **

Steve stared at the screen as Clint sat back down, expecting Ryan to start the usual lead-in to the episode, but he didn’t. He and Shane just kept staring at the camera. At each other. Mouths opened. Shut.

The video went for six minutes before Ryan sputtered, “ _What_?!”

The screen went dark.

**_Solved_ **

 

(Two days later, Clint helped him set up a Twitter account so he could at them – Steve still didn’t really understand the phrase – and apologize for messing up their series.

The internet exploded.)

The End

**Author's Note:**

> A big thank you to Radialarch for the assistance in building a work skin for this fic that allowed me to format the video's "audio"! It came out great and I'm so excited!


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